Tick, Tick, Boom and A Run

My next race, the Hot Chocolate 5K, is in one week. My "training," thus far, has been atrocious. Today, I had one of my "de-stress" runs. I had less than 30 minutes to squeeze in a run and I ran nearly a mile and a half. The first mile was at my comfortable pace of 5mph and for the remainder of the run, I turned it up to 6mph and ran until I was tired. It wasn't too far, but it was sufficient.

I'm not sure how the race on Sunday will go. I am, of course, extremely nervous about it. You'd think after completing a half marathon last year I would be more comfortable with the short races. I think this one has me all wound up because it starts at 7:30 in the morning. That is EARLY for me! That's what time I wake up on the mornings I have to get the kids to school. To even get to the location for this race, I will have to leave my house at 5am and I'll be running at 7:30!! Then....then there is the post party which is an expo of chocolate!!! Not too sure how my body will be handling chocolate that early in the morning.

Moving on to the not so fun part of this post. The car I drive to work, which is a clunker, has been acting up as of late. We have been trying to brainstorm as to what the problem was with it. On Friday evening, I drove from work over to the martial arts studio to watch my son. After that was over, the four of us went over to Walmart and purchased a few small groceries and parts for the car. We decided to change the spark plugs, the air filter and the oil filter/oil. Then, we grabbed a bite to eat and headed home. I was almost home, driving the kids in the family car, when my cell rang. It was my husband calling to tell me that I needed to turn around because the car quit running and wouldn't start back up. Great. Just great. Here we are on the way home with parts. Just our luck, right? We decided to have the car towed home the following morning and he would look at it then.

Well, he jacks the car up and comes into the house to get me. "It can't be fixed," he says. Yeah.  I go outside and peer under the car and into a hole about the size of my fist in the engine block. So, needless to say, I don't know what in the world we are going to do. We just spent nearly 500 dollars putting new tires on that car! Happy New Year!!!! It's always something, isn't it?

Made Me LOL

I really adore a good read. I like books that make me cry and the kind that suck you in and keep a tight hold on you. I also like books that make me (literally) laugh out loud. The book I am reading right now, Under A Vampire Moon, by Lynsay Sands has made me LOL several times. It's a very good read so far!!

Today, I ran 4.1 miles before I went to work. I really, REALLY wanted to fit in the 6 miles that I should have done for the past 2 weeks now. I had a plan. I took the tablet downstairs and went to Fox.com to watch a back episode of this season's Hell's Kitchen (I'm SO far behind). It was going pretty good except the sound and the picture were out of sync. That usually drives me bat-shit crazy, but I didn't mind it because I was in motion and it was doing a good job of keeping me distracted. I find that music doesn't keep my mind from wandering to how far I've gone or have to go or how long I've been going. I digress. So, a little over halfway through the episode, it starts to buffer. No biggie. However, it continues to buffer and continues to buffer and then restarts the episode almost all the way back to the beginning!! It all went downhill from there. I turned to Pandora, only to have it keep pulling up slow crap and it will only let you skip so many times before it becomes unresponsive! So, 4.1 miles is all I got in, but I'll call it a victory non the less.


I'm going to try to get up early to run tomorrow. It's kinda late now, so we'll see how it goes. At least I get off from work at a fairly decent hour tomorrow!